I loved driving through the night bringing supplies to Kipushya
Mission in the East Kasai Province of the Democratic republic of Congo. We had
a diesel Forward Control Land Rover which just purred along in the cool night
air. I was returning from Kamina where our headquarters mission was situated.
The first one hundred Kilometres was swampy then sandy country which gave way
to thick forest as we neared Kabongo on the rail line north to Kabalo and
Kongolo.
It was about 11pm and I need to go into the bush to relieve
myself. So I stopped the truck. Left the lights on and climbed out not going
very far from the vehicle. There was no one around. Or so I thought.
Just as I climbed back in and closed the door ready to start
the engine there was a huge roar at the side door nearest me. It was some big
cat for sure. I quickly slide the LR window shut as well as the back sliding window
at the back of the cab. Wow what was that? I decided that I needed to escape
out of there as soon as I could. I didn’t want this huge animal up on the back of
the truck trying to get at me in the cabin.
I hit the starter and
quickly had the truck rolling again. The further I got from the Kabongo forest
the more my adrenaline levels went down. I kept driving through the night and
eventually arrived back at the Mission 457 kilometres later in the mid morning.
One year later my
Dad and Mum were visiting us in the Congo. It was 1974. We had driven to Kamina
down the ‘farm roads’ via Kisapo swamps and now Dad and I were driving back
during the night up the other road via Kabongo.
We had planned to sleep out once we were tired enough, as we had our camp
beds that we could use beside the Land Rover. As we neared Kabongo and the forested
area I told Dad what had happened about the same time at night last year. I
asked him if he wanted to stop or keep going. He said “Let's go on for a bit
longer.” Wise move? We were both very tired but we pushed on north for another two hours.
I told Dad of sleeping under mosquito nets on the side of
the road with Eddie Rowlands once, when on this brilliant moonlit night we
could hear a group of African coming along making a huge noise. We could hear
them for a long time before they eventually arrived at the truck. They came right
up to our Mosquito nets and said, “Ah Basungu!” In other words only silly ‘white
people’ would sleep out in the bush. Why not go into the village and be
protected?
Dad and I passed through a small section of bush and then
parked on the side of the road. It was about 1am. in the morning. We pulled out
the safari camp beds from the back and set them up close to the
vehicle. We made ourselves comfortable in our sleeping bags and then tried to
sleep. We still had more than three hundred kilometres to go to reach home.
After one hour I quietly said,” Dad, are you still awake?” He
said, “Yes”. I must have scared him to much with my stories. He was listening
for every crack of a twig.
Next thing I knew was that He was snoring. About 4 am a huge
eight ton Toyota Truck fully loaded with produce and people went by within
three metres of Dad’s head and he didn’t even hear it.
Next morning He said to me, “I have all the goodies for a really
good meal at lunch time. Find a good spot and we will light a fire and have a
feed of fillet steak, onions and tomatoes etc. There was no convenient picnic
area when it was dinner time so we just stopped on the side of the rough road
out on the savannah grass plains. Dad made a fire with whatever we could find.
I said to Dad we can’t just fiddle around as we needed to cross the Mani Ferry over the large Lomami River by sundown. As you guessed it we didn’t reach the ferry on time so we slept the
second night with the Bush animals on the Bank of the Lomami River. Maybe with
the Hippos or Crocs or Moma [huge grassland pythons 10-20 feet long] this time.
Next morning we made it home and slept the sleep
of the just that night in our own home at Kipushya Mission.
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